Remarks at the Swearing In of Nicholas deB. Katzenbach as Under Secretary of State.

Secretary and Mrs. Katzenbach and family, Justice White, Secretary Rusk, Members of the Cabinet, Members of the Congress, my friends:

I am delighted to see so many friends and admirers of our new Under Secretary of State here in the White House with us this afternoon. The presence of so many friends from so many fields speaks well of the kind of man that we all know Nicholas Katzenbach to be.

A nation, like an individual, must earn the right to have its professions of idealism taken seriously. The tree must be judged by the fruit.

Thus we cannot escape the intimate connection between our domestic and our foreign policy.

When we claim to be sustaining the cause of freedom in the world, we are judged-and I think rightly so--in terms of our commitment to liberty and justice here at home.

As our new Under Secretary of State put it more than 5 years ago: "To be effective, a commitment to principle must be credible in terms of a nation's institutions, its values, and its character."

We Americans do not believe in moral double-bookkeeping--and so today we stand before the world asking only that others employ a similar, single standard of evaluation.

By such a standard, the appointment of Nicholas Katzenbach as the Under Secretary of State demonstrates that what we are at home demonstrates what we are abroad. He has stood here among us for the cause of freedom; he has pursued justice for every American. Every man is in his heart. Now the scope of his mark is the world, and the qualities of his mind and spirit which have made him the champion of social change and human progress here at home will now make him their advocate throughout the world.

Nick Katzenbach invoked the police power in the struggle for freedom for all Americans. Power was used--with somber reluctance--in defense of the rule of law.

We and our allies this afternoon--with equal reluctance--are employing police power in Vietnam. And for the same goal: to maintain the fundamental principles of international rule of law.

As author Nicholas Katzenbach wrote back in 1961:

"The legal institutions in the international community are not adequate to contemporary affairs. But these institutions, such as they are, exist and contribute to international order. They will continue until some political combination has the capability to create new institutions more consonant with order and... a decent regard for human values."

By this appointment--recommended to me by the distinguished Secretary of State--of a scholar-administrator with a lifelong dedication to finding the appropriate mixture of power and principle, the United States reaffirms its adherence to the rule of law in the world, as well as in the Nation.

It reaffirms its quest for that creativity in the international arena which will make the United Nations the instrument of world order, of world peace, and of world justice.

Finally, I might just add as a personal note that both President Kennedy and I have fearfully overworked Nick Katzenbach.

Although Assistant Attorney General, then Deputy Attorney General, and then Attorney General by title, he has for the past 6 years been one of the key participants in the inner councils of all the important decisions of the Presidency. In the Dominican crisis, in the Cuban crisis, in the Berlin crisis, Nick Katzenbach was available and he was called upon for his views and for his judgments.

And those who have profited from his counsel, as I have, will realize that as Under Secretary of State our country is gaining a talented, creative administrator who is not really changing jobs, but merely rechanneling his creativity.